Holding their breaths, they stared at one another, listening as the footsteps clattered to a stop. There was heavy breathing, and Lorelei covered her own mouth, listening. She leaned close to the floor and peeked out around the edge of the boxes.
A figure in a hooded, floor-length cloak stood at the top of the stairs, looking out into the darkened office. She held a slender hand out in front of her, palming an object that gave off a faint, red light, pointed nails silhouetted against the orb. She cast the light source over the room, then froze when the door to the fire escape, still open, swayed in a slight breeze. “Reveal,” said the feminine voice, and the orb pulsed a wave of light out into the room, coming at Lorelei too fast for her to duck away, but then it passed over her, as it did the whole place, and petered out.
“What was that?” Mr. Carr asked from the head of the stairs, and Lorelei nearly cried out from fear with him so close to where they hid.
The figure turned back to him, the hood completely obscuring her face. “Should have lit up any charmed folk if they were here.” She crossed the room and yanked the door to the balcony shut. Lorelei had never been so grateful neither she nor Grier were charmed. “Faulty lock, big surprise, this place is so—” She simply grunted and crossed the room again, cloak snapping behind her. “Give me your notes and get back to work, we’ve already been here too long.”
CHAPTER 16
CONTROL
Lorelei was searching for a distraction from all the loose ends flopping about in her mind. She and Grier hadn’t figured out exactly what Mr. Carr was up to, but they’d decided no good was at the top of the list. It would take more sleuthing, and Lorelei made Grier promise he would take things slow if that was the only way to be covert. She tried to fill the time quizzing Ziah, but the succubus was quick to get bored or frustrated. Conrad was being aloof again save for passing greetings in the hall. So much for looking for the deed or finding the right time to talk to him, she supposed. But as long as Byron didn’t show up out of nowhere and Arista still considered her wards successful, she realized things could be much worse.
She wandered into the kitchen during lunch just as Hana spilled a whole pot of minestrone right on Ando that was meant for the buffet line. Her uncle stifled his anger when Lorelei offered to clean up and supervise the kitchen while he went to change. Hana heaved a sigh when her uncle left, trying to balance all three of the special orders that needed to go out on one arm.
“Let me help.” Lorelei lifted one off of her, following Hana into the dining room, but the double doors suddenly swung back at her. She saved the tray, holding it over her head as Hana scurried back into the kitchen, eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”
Hana looked as if she’d seen a ghost, but ghosts didn’t exist, so whatever was out there had to be much worse. The girl put her trays on the counter, panting hard, and slapped her chest. “It’s…it’s not possible.”
Lorelei eased herself to the door and cracked it open. Out in the dining room, the many tables were scattered about with little strategy. Most were covered in patterned cloths in deep jewel tones and the wall sconces were always set to a low orange glow, but the windows running across the front and side of the building had their curtains pulled back with bright sunlight filtering in.
There were very few empty tables, and Lorelei recognized just about every guest. The dryad couple had made up, sharing each other’s sandwiches over by the big bay window, the three satyr sisters she’d checked in that evening were laughing brightly over more than three empty glasses, and Mr. Carr was dining alone and skimming the newspaper, tapping away on his tablet.
“There.” Hana’s small, high voice came up from beneath her as she poked her head out under Lorelei’s. “That’s Collier Coyote.”
Where Hana had pointed sat a boy, or maybe a man, it was sort of hard to tell with his baby face. He had frosted blond hair, swept forward and tousled to look careless and unkempt, and his sleeves were rolled up to reveal forearms that looked like the gallery wall of a tattoo shop. So, a man then, Lorelei decided, glancing down at the top of Hana’s head. Maybe a little worse than a ghost.
“Is that a friend of yours?”
Hana jumped back into the kitchen. “Gods, no! He’s, well, look!” She dug her phone out of her apron, and with a few taps pulled up an image of the same man on her screen. He was shirtless, but covered in enough of those tattoos that he may as well have been dressed, holding a microphone over his head.
“Oh, he’s like a singer?” Lorelei was still balancing the tray, trading it from one hand to the other.
Hana sighed, hugging her phone to her chest. “And a model, and an actor, and a philanthropist. He used to be in Cardinal Direction, but they broke up a year ago which was, like, the worst day of my life besides when my parents died, but he went solo and thank the gods because he’s the cutest one.”
Hana swooned up against the wall with a dreamy look. She had been growing her bangs out so that they blended in with her pin straight locks, and had started wearing the tiniest bit of makeup on her eyelids and lips, but her favorite things persisted in the form of pop culture and young adult novels, and with the opportunity to combine the two sitting about twenty feet away, Hana’s round face suddenly looked significantly younger.
“I can’t believe he’s here!” She checked the kitchen, but her uncle hadn’t returned from changing out of his soup-covered clothes. “Sometimes he does surprise shows, but he doesn’t have anything scheduled near here at all.” She scrolled through her phone again, and Lorelei could see she had some kind of app that looked to be all about the musician including show dates, photos, a message board, more photos, songs, and a lot more photos.
Lorelei peeked out into the dining room again and noted the table at which Collier sat. “Well, this is for him. Why don’t you take it over and introduce yourself?” She offered Hana the tray.
The girl’s eyes went wide, and she pushed it back. “Are you kidding? What in the deepest abyss would I even say?”
Lorelei tried not to laugh. “How about hi?”
“I couldn’t!” She bit her lip and glanced back down at her phone.
“You definitely can. Here—” Lorelei plucked her phone away and shoved the tray into her hands. She grabbed her shoulders and pushed her out the door.
Hana stood perfectly straight when she entered the dining room though no one looked at her. She lifted a leg to go forward, but spun back around. Lorelei grabbed her and spun her again toward the table, guiding her halfway there.
Hana finished the short trip on her own, face white and petrified, stuttering out a hello to the tattooed ex-boy band member. Lorelei watched from the middle of the dining room, then glanced down at the table beside her. Jordan Carr was looking back up expectantly. “Having a nice visit, Mr. Carr?”
He slowly and awkwardly told her yes as she craned her neck toward the Coyote kid’s table, watching as Hana offered him the tray.
“That’s great! Any fun plans or anything?”
She didn’t pay much attention to his answer, trying instead to overhear Hana, but only caught some giggling as the pop star flashed a photograph-worthy smile up at her. That’s right, you be nice, she thought, prepared to intercede if Hana’s feelings were on the verge of getting hurt.
“Can I help you with something?”
“Me?” She blinked at Mr. Carr then glanced at the copy of The Moonlit Shores Seer he’d been reading, opened to a photo of the park in the town’s center. Unfortunately, his tablet had again gone dark. “I was just going to ask if you’d been to town yet.”
“No,” he was very careful to say, eyeing her.
Her stomach knotted at his lie. “Um, I was just going to suggest a trip to city hall. It’s a very pretty building, weird too, and the park out front is, well, it’s okay this time of year.”
“Right.” Jordan Carr shut the paper just as she caught a headline that mentioned humans in all capitals.
“Well,”—Lorelei smiled, clearing aw
ay his empty glass—“you should! You might even meet the mayor. Real nice warlock. Super charming. Have a great meal!” And with that, she swept back into the kitchen.
Only the door collided with something hard on the other side. Grier was standing in the way, rubbing his nose.
“You know you’re not supposed to stand behind these,” she said guiltily as he bit off a chunk of some sort of meat in his fist. He was sweaty and had clearly just come in from working with Ren outside, not bothering with a plate.
“Well, it’s the door with a window,” he told her.
“What were you—” Lorelei peeked out it to see Hana had taken a seat next to Collier. She was giggling a little harder now. “Oh, yeah that’s Collier Coyote,” she said as if she knew. “Apparently Hana has a little crush on him.” She looked at the lycan as he took another rather aggressive bite.
“I know who he is. His favorite color is forget-me-not blue, and he’s a Gemini.” He rolled his eyes, rattling off facts Hana had undoubtedly told him. “What’s he doing here?”
Lorelei chuckled. “Working, I guess. I mean, I’d say so.” Collier was taking a picture with her on his phone, and then Hana started to pat her apron pockets.
“Oh, right.” Lorelei pulled out Hana’s phone from her own pocket. A little envelope popped up on the application about the singer. Grier reached over and tapped the icon, and Lorelei gasped. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“This is just her fandom stuff,” he said. “She shows it to me all the time. She’s got a friend overseas who messages her a lot, someone to talk to other than me about this junk.”
Lorelei sheepishly looked back at the screen. There was a long history of messages between the two. She saw the words lonely and wish and quickly turned off the screen. “Well, it’s still none of our business.”
Hana burst back into the kitchen then, startling them both. “I did it!” She squealed. “And he’s gonna—”
The phone in Lorelei’s hand buzzed.
“There it is!” Hana grabbed it back from her and squealed again. “Look!” She showed them both the photo, sent from Collier to her. “You were right, Lore, that was so easy. And he was so nice!”
Lorelei’s eyes widened, and she smiled, but her stomach knotted again—she did not expect them to trade numbers. She tried to remember how old the singer was from the brief look at the app she’d seen, but could only recall the suggestive titles of some of his songs.
The phone buzzed again, and Hana giggled down at it before slipping it into her pocket and grabbing the other two trays. With a happy spin and without dropping a single thing, Hana swept back into the dining room to deliver the rest of the food.
Grier crossed his arms and glared at Lorelei.
“What?” She hurried away from him to where the pots were on the stove, checking that nothing bubbled over.
“You told her to talk to him?”
“Yes,” she said with force, mostly trying to convince herself. “Why shouldn’t she?”
“I didn’t say she shouldn’t.” He pulled open the pantry, making the door wobble on its hinges. He rifled around without much of a purpose despite the prepared food already sitting out.
Lorelei wiped up a bit of minestrone she’d missed earlier, watching him pout as he shut the pantry, coming up empty.
“I just think it’s a bad idea is all,” he said.
“You should really be more supportive of your best friend.”
Grier groaned.
“And maybe,” Lorelei lilted, casually looking into another pot and adjusting the temperature, “Hana won’t bother you so much if she’s got somebody else to talk to about music and astrology and romance novels…”
Grier’s brows shifted from angry to concerned. “I didn’t say she was bothering me.”
The door to the dining room swung open, and Ando charged back into the kitchen, fresh apron on and somehow a ladle in two of his four hands already. “Everybody out!” he called, waving the utensils in the air and reaching for a third, and the two scattered.
***
Instead of coming to the desk as was the norm every evening just before the end of Lorelei’s shift, Philomena actually phoned down instead one night. In a rushed voice, the cupid shouted to come “with the quickness of Hermes” and hung up without further clarification. Lorelei hesitated, remembering the last time she’d been in room 168 over a week prior. Carrying Seamus-turned-toad in a tight grip, she’d guiltily passed off a set of Moondoe’s cups to the cupid along with her suspicions. Thankfully when Seamus reverted, he didn’t remember a moment of the exchange or what Lorelei had said. He did, however, burst forth from the safety of a cardboard box and toppled right off the check-in counter, terrifying the burly Mr. Ambros into shifting into his Turkish Angora form which had excited then disappointed Aly all in the course of about five minutes.
Magic, on the other hand, remembered everything. It was funny when it sensed guilt and sometimes liked to needle, so though Lorelei didn’t know it explicitly, the weird sloshing in her guts as she finally climbed the stairs up to the guest rooms was both mundane and bewitched. Working together on her, by the time she got to the door, she thought she might be too sick to knock, but did so anyway.
The manor always knew exactly what its guests needed, and apparently it had spared no expense for Philomena. There was a bed, sure, but it was tucked away in a corner by the bathroom door, the rest of the space filled with desks and counter tops that were littered in beakers and scales and ingredients like a proper lab. The whole space was doused in an ultraviolet light, and the air was heavy with the smell of roses.
Something bubbled on a burner dangerously close to a stack of notes, the flame beneath flickering blue. Beside that was a table covered in weapons, a set of peashooters, a slingshot, and the arrows propped up in the corner confirmed she had a crossbow too. A white board hung on the far wall, covered in purple and red marker with heart-shaped post it notes stuck all over, some of the words legible, but most were Greek to Lorelei.
“I’m sorry to tell you,” said Lorelei, swallowing down the sick feeling as her eyes passed over everything a second and third time trying to take it all in, “but Ziah’s schedule hasn’t opened up yet.”
“Oh, that’s not what I called you up here for.” Philomena took her by the hand and pulled her to a table, raised up to counter height against the side wall. “This is why.”
The cupid threw her hands out with a flourish, wiggling her fingers over a line of three petri dishes. Each had a pool of milky liquid in them, but the second and third ones shimmered. Lorelei’s eyes fell over the rest of the table, three Moondoe’s cups there, lined up over the dishes, and Philomena had written on them with pink marker Control, Test One, Test Two. All of the Os were hearts.
“Can you believe it?” Philomena whispered.
Lorelei knew what she was looking at was an experiment, specifically one she had requested. After seeing how one of Ziah’s clients reacted to the smell of the coffees Bridgette brought in, and how weird she and Conrad were acting in his room, Lorelei brought the nicked cups to Philomena and asked if she would be able to discern what they contained besides coffee. “If anything,” she added when asking, both for good measure and her own conscious. It had been a little longer than a week since, the allotted time Philomena guessed she would need to really find out what was inside.
Still, she had no idea what the experiment actually meant. “I feel like this is important, but I could use a hint.”
Philomena clicked her tongue and bounced in place. “Your suspicions were right—those drinks were spiked! And not even with the legal stuff.” She made a face like a mad woman, verging on comical, but Lorelei’s insides still churned, unable to laugh.
“Legal stuff?”
“The charmed are allowed to use lots of different components, and us cupids work with even more dangerous stuff when it comes to emotions, specifically love, which is, by the way, the strongest and most powerful emoti
on in the whole wide world!” She fluttered her lashes and looked up to the ceiling like she could see some bright and beautiful expanse beyond it.
Cupids could, of course, see something others couldn’t, so it was no surprise that when Lorelei glanced upward too, all she saw was an overhead light and a cobweb in the corner.
“Sure, okay, and?”
“Since love’s so strong, the things that can manipulate it are highly guarded. Cupids are responsible with this stuff, it’s in our blood,”—she swung an arm out, nearly knocking over a tall beaker filled with something oozy and green—“but there was a component in these two cups that even we aren’t supposed to deal in. In fact, I’m a little nervous keeping the evidence around at all, but it’s not like a magistratus is going to come walking in that door, huh?” She laughed, and Lorelei forced out a chuckle, Mr. Carr briefly wandering through her mind.
“So, what’s in them?”
“Well!” Philomena pointed down at the first cup. “Here’s my control. I went to that Moondoe’s in Moonlit Shores and got a vanilla latte just to see what they normally put in these things. As I suspected, only some addictive ingredients, energy boosters, and flavor enhancers. There was actually a little coffee in there too, but by Aphrodite’s dove it tasted real good.”
She was talking very quickly, and Lorelei noticed then that there were a lot of empty Moondoe’s cups stacked up in the trashcan over by the bed. It was important to note that the faeries emptied the bins every morning.
“So, I tested what was left in the two cups you gave me. They were enchanted a little, so that made it kinda hard because I don’t know much about cajolery spells, I’m a cupid not a witch, but I make enough elixirs to identify ingredients, and whoa, there was a really fancy blend of damiana, mura-puma, mandrake, henbane, and,”—she took a deep breath and looked at her seriously—“rosa desideratae.”
The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2) Page 17